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Police: Crime in Savannah's Yamacraw Village declining

When he first moved to Yamacraw Village about three years ago, Kenneth Fox said he constantly worried about his wife and kids.

“There was a time when we couldn’t step outside our door,” Fox said. “Day after day after day it was the same thing — people here are tired of it.”

Even as crime fell for four straight years throughout his precinct, Savannah-Chatham police Capt. Mike Wilkins, the Downtown Precinct commander, said it kept rising in Yamacraw. So, 11 months ago Wilkins launched an initiative to drive down crime numbers in the public housing community managed by the Savannah Housing Authority.

“The plan was, amongst other things, to develop a relationship with the residents of Yamacraw in order to convince them to call the police when crimes are occurring,” Wilkins said. “And not only crime problems, but quality of life complaints.”

So far, it’s worked.

In the first seven months of 2012, only 11 Part I crimes — which include homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft and auto theft — have been reported in Yamacraw Village, a 38.9 percent decrease from 2011.

At the same time, Wilkins noted, calls to police from the neighborhood only fell 1.7 percent, a fact he believes means more people are open to working with the police to quash crime.

“We’ve got fewer crimes but basically the same level of reporting, which tells me that people are maybe not as comfortable as they should be, but much more comfortable than they used to be,” Wilkins said. “People have to believe that the police are going to attempt to resolve their problems before they’re going to call us, and that’s the major part of the effort.”

That effort involves placing public housing enforcement officers directly in Yamacraw Village to get to know residents on a personal level.

“We try to develop good relationships with these folks so they know we’re going to help them,” said Star Cpl. Reggie Owens. “They get to know us, we get to know them, so it works both ways.”

Owens — who was born in Yamacraw Village, which, he said, helps him relate to occupants — said developing those bonds has helped police target residents who are violating leases in the community.

“If they do something wrong, they’re going to get evicted,” he said. “Evictions are up. We’ve worked to get certain people — the problem people — out of here.”

That’s helped restore faith in officers among residents, said Fox, who is the president of the Yamacraw Village Resident Association.

“People in the community are more open with the officers and more willing to go to them,” he said. “So the police have a quicker response when something happens. These officers are making themselves known and making themselves available and the community is responding.”

Now the main issue in the neighborhood is outsiders cutting through, said Jamie Hall, who has lived there for three years.

“It’s become a lot calmer in the time I’ve lived here, but people who don’t need to be here still come in,” she said. “It’s people who don’t live here, people’s company — the community’s got to keep pushing to get the people who don’t belong out of here.”

It’s an issue that has long existed, Wilkins said.

Last year, suspects in 75 percent of violent crimes in the community were from outside of Yamacraw.

Wilkins said his officers are continuing to address that issue.

“We’ve made some headway,” Wilkins said. “The impact we’ve made this far is fairly significant, but are we finished? No. We’ve got a ways to go before we’re finished. We have a lot of work to do, and we intend to continue to improve on these improvements that we have made.”

Fox hopes that will continue to help residents open up to law enforcement and help the community drive out the criminals that spend time there.

“The police can’t do it all on their own, we have to step up as a part of this neighborhood,” Fox said.

“It may be a low-income neighborhood, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stand up and make it a nice, safe neighborhood to live in.”